


Don't Forget

by deputyhugo



Category: Tuck Everlasting - Miller/Tysen/Shear & Federle
Genre: Modern Day, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:36:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7957084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deputyhugo/pseuds/deputyhugo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles is finally settling down into his job, has put his past behind him, and feels more or less content. But he's going to realize the repercussions of that pretty soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Forget

Five years. Miles had been living in Upstate New York for five years now, and it was starting to feel like home. Maybe it was because he was finally in his thirties, at least according to the driver’s license Jesse had most recently forged for him, so he didn’t have to pretend to be quite as youthful as he once had. Maybe it was because the children he had taught in his first year were now entering high school, and he often got emails from them thanking him for the impact he had made on their lives. Or maybe it was just that enough time had gone by so that his past had faded into the background, to the point where it wasn’t too difficult to pretend he really was a thirty year old man, instead of a two-century old relic the universe had accidentally made immortal. 

Regardless of the reason, it was a comforting feeling, and Miles couldn’t help but think that, given time, that feeling might grow into something almost like happiness. If he kept at this ordinary, routine life for long enough, maybe his past would fade even more. Maybe he could be completely content at last.

In keeping with his routine, when Saturday came around he took Elle and Lex, his two Labrador puppies, to the park. It allowed the dogs to run around and kept Miles from being caught with nothing to do on the weekends, so park days were a staple of their weekly schedule. 

On this particular Saturday, he let the dogs play freely as he rested on a park bench, taking in the September weather. Although the sun shone unobstructed by clouds, it did not completely remove the chill from the air. A light breeze ruffled the trees, as if preparing for the oh-so-near date when it would tear the leaves from their branches. Miles, who had never cared for the heat, felt a mild rush of delight at the thought of autumn approaching. Soon the leaves, which were just beginning to lose their vibrant green hue, would be an array of gold and red and brown. The air would grow even colder, and soon enough it would be Halloween, a holiday that Miles liked more than he cared to admit.

“Madeline!” A woman’s voice shattered Miles’s silent contemplation of the changing seasons. A little girl with curly orange pigtails raced past him, cackling wildly. She was pursued by a young woman with short, dark hair who looked like she hadn’t gotten a full night of sleep in quite a while.

“Madeline, slow down!” She huffed, stopping in front of Miles’s bench to catch her breath. 

Madeline stopped in her tracks, but not for the sake of her guardian. She had spotted Elle and Lex tussling in the grass, and they immediately claimed her attention.

“Puppies!” She shrieked. In an instant she broke into a sprint once more, this time in the direction of the dogs. She collapsed beside them and began to pet them with great enthusiasm.

“Madeline, no!” The woman cried. She started to follow Madeline into the grass, but Miles called out to her.

“That’s fine, ma’am, I don’t mind!”  
The woman slowed down and turned around. “Pardon?”

“They’re mine,” Miles explained. “I don’t mind if she plays with them. They’re very good with kids.”

The woman exhaled in relief and sat down beside him. “Thank you so much. If I tried to take her away from those dogs now, she’d definitely have a tantrum.” She stuck her hand out towards him. “I’m Shelly.”

Miles shook her hand. “Miles. Nice to meet you.” He nodded towards Madeline, who had already made fast friends with Elle and Lex. “How old is she?”

“Almost four,” Shelly responded. “But still stuck in the ‘terrible twos’, I think. How old are yours?” She chuckled, gesturing towards the puppies.

Miles smiled. “About six months now.” 

“Wow, they’re still babies, I guess!” Shelly’s eyes bugged out in surprise. “How long have you had them?”

“I got them at two weeks old,” He answered. “So, almost six months.”

She looked impressed. “That must have been a lot of work, taking care of them.”

Miles shrugged. “I guess. I’m a school teacher, so Elle and Lex give me something to do when I’m not working. And it’s not so hard, anyway. Not as much work as having a real child was, at least.”

Shelly raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Do you have kids?” 

Whoops. Miles internally kicked himself for slipping up like that. He hadn’t even really thought about his son in years. “Um, yeah. I have a son.” 

“How old is he now?”

Miles squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to let any of his painful memories slip into his head. He couldn’t maintain a conversation if he started thinking about all of that now. “Um…” He was supposed to be thirty, how old was a son supposed to be when you were thirty? “Five?” He opened his eyes and glanced at Shelly.

She seemed to buy it. “What’s his name?”

Miles knew the instant he said his son’s name, there would be no stopping the flood of repressed memories, but in that moment his mind had become too frazzled to think up another lie. He tried to pull his son’s name from his memories.

Nothing came. There was a vacuous hole where his son’s name should be. Had it really been so long since he had thought of him that his name had disappeared altogether? As he racked his brain for the name, the blood drained out of his face. Why couldn’t he remember?

“Are you alright?” Shelly sounded concerned.

Miles stood up, too horrified to respond. “Elle, Lex,” he whispered, unable to muster the breath necessary to speak at full volume. When the puppies did not respond, he ran to them and scooped them up, tearing them away from Madeline, who shrieked in response.

Miles paid no heed. He strode away, leaving Shelly to sort out the bizarre turn of events for herself. He had something more important to attend to.

Miles rushed home, trembling all the way. What was his son’s name? 

The instant he entered his apartment, he collapsed to the ground and let his horror overcome him, pinning him to the ground. He ransacked his mind, trying to recover the name from the depths of his memory. It had to be in there somewhere. Yet, after what seemed like hours of searching, he could only come up with a single letter.

“It started with a T, right?” He whispered to himself, but he could not respond with confidence. “I think it started with a T.”

He fished his phone out of his pocket. He didn’t want anyone to worry about him, not any more than they already did, but he couldn’t stand this. He had to know. With trembling fingers he punched in his mother’s number and listened as the ring back tone played.

“Hello?” His mother’s voice, clear and comforting as ever, blasted too loudly from the phone. In his anxiousness Miles had tapped the speakerphone button by mistake.

He turned it off and raised the phone to his ear again. “Ma.” His voice trembled. “Ma, can you answer a question for me?”

“Miles? Miles, what’s wrong?” Mae’s voice grew panicky in an instant at the sound of his shaky voice. “Are you hurting again?” 

“My son,” Miles rasped. His throat had gone dry. “What’s his name?”

“What?” Mae asked. “Miles, what’s the matter?”

“Just answer the question. Please.”

“Thomas, of course.” Mae responded. “Why did you need to ask? Miles, what’s happened? Do you need-”

Miles hung up. Thomas. How could he have forgotten? Of course that was his name. It always had been. He wouldn’t forget again.

But he couldn’t be sure of that. Miles scrambled to his feet and began to ransack his house in search of something to write with, something permanent. It took him five minutes before he found a fat black sharpie in the drawer of his desk. With shaking hands, he etched THOMAS onto the back of his hand. But that would wash off. He scrawled it across his desk too, just in front of where his keyboard sat. And then he etched it onto his keyboard. Every surface he looked at, he scrawled his son’s name. Because he knew there was only one thing that could possibly be worse than thinking about his son, and that was forgetting him. 

An hour later, after he had written THOMAS in big, scraggly letters across nearly everything he owned, his phone rang. It was Jesse.

“Miles?” Jesse sounded terrified. “Ma said you called her. Do you need help? I can come get you.”

“It’s alright.” Miles assured him, looking around the room at his handiwork. “Everything’s fine. His name is Thomas. I won’t forget it now. I’m fine. His name is Thomas. My bright boy Thomas.”


End file.
